


Rotting In The Sun

by gala_apples



Category: Bandom, My Chemical Romance
Genre: M/M, Recreational Drug Use, Second Chances, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-07
Updated: 2012-07-07
Packaged: 2017-11-09 08:34:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/453487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gala_apples/pseuds/gala_apples
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Who would have guessed sunblock should be a major part of a zombie preparedness kit?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rotting In The Sun

Saturday night Mikey goes out. He puts on a burnt cd of techno and twitches to it as he drives through the warehouse district trying to find one square grey building in a sea of square grey buildings. It’s easier than it sounds. Most factories don’t have a full parking lot at midnight. Full as in _full_ , he has to turn around and start searching the streets and pray he can remember how to parallel park. His eventual parking spot is blocks away from the reclaimed building, but it’s the best he’s gonna do. 

He pops his tabs on the walk. They’re salty, like always. Mikey can’t help but wonder if it’s the meth that’s salty, or the MDMA, or whatever household product the two active ingredients is combined with. The aftertaste is nasty, but he doesn’t want to crack open his bottle of water yet. It’s gonna be a long night, and it’s a new venue for him and his friends; no one is sure if there’s gonna be running water.

He starts to come down early in the morning. Everything seems off colour, from the walls of people that the lights are still flashing on, to the grass and the trees. Dawn is on the horizon. Mikey steps on it. He traded his sunglasses for someone’s mix CD. He’s not down on himself for it, he’s sure the tenth track Dora remix will be good, but if the sunlight touches him his eyes are going to hemorrhage from the pain. The plastic flippy thing he can never remember the name of won’t really help if the sun does come out before he gets home, but thankfully it’s overcast. He makes it, sprinting the last few feet to the house.

Mikey sleeps. He wakes up a few times, but each time he just adjusts his junk, rolls over, or goes for a quick piss as necessary. The day after a roll is like an alcohol hangover; some times are worse than other times, but regardless your mouth will be dry, you’ll have interesting memories and you’ll need to sleep for sixteen hours. Each time he wakes he can hear Gerard playing video games in the next room. Luckily he’s good at sleeping through noises. He’d rather have the noise of the recently unemployed than the silence of Gerard being in another state.

When he wakes up for good it’s simple enough to pad down the hall and sit beside his brother. He doesn’t even bother to put sweatpants over his boxers until his legs are covered in goosebumps an hour later.

They play the entirety of Monday. It’s not all Halo; Mario, Zelda and Rockband all feature heavily. Mikey’s fingers are swollen by three am, but it’s worth it. He’s missed this. Gerard’s been gone too long. They don’t need to talk about why he left, or what happened when he was gone. All that matters is that he’s back.

Mikey wakes up to someone pounding on Gerard’s window. While he doesn’t know who the fuck it is, can’t know without opening his eyes, which really seems like asking too much of him, he does think it’s probably not Gerard. There’s no warm body beside him indicating Gerard’s sleeping, but even if he went outside for some reason and got locked out, they haven’t moved the spare key since Mikey was in grade school. Even gone for a year there’s no way Gerard would have forgotten the nail hammered a few feet above the concrete in the garage. 

He reaches up and wipes the drool from the side of his mouth then rolls over so he can look through the awkwardly placed basement window. It only takes a few blinks to be certain. It’s definitely Frank’s face. He doesn’t stop pounding when he sees Mikey looking back at him. If anything he gets more vigorous. Mikey throws the blanket off, not bothering to check that he’s wearing boxers. Frank woke him up in the middle of the night, that is a come as you are situation.

It takes a minute for Mikey to get the window open. He used to use it a lot with Gerard, blocking the door with a rolled up shirt and blowing smoke out the screen to avoid getting yelled at, but once they turned eighteen they didn’t have to hide their habits anymore. Or at least not that one. As soon as Mikey gets it halfway he nearly gets a boot to the face as Frank throws himself feet first through the window. 

“The fuck? You couldn’t just ring the doorbell?”

“No. It’s dawn, and your door is on the north side. How could you not know that? It’s a wonder you haven’t died.”

Mikey’s used to hearing that phrase when it comes to stuff like appliances and tools. He doesn’t have a great track record with toasters and space heaters and drills. He’s never heard it about his own front door. “Okay?”

“Maybe you haven’t figured this out yet, but remembering the sun rises from the east is very important.”

“Uh, why?” Mikey was pretty done with Earth science once e passed it in junior high.

“Uh, why?” Frank repeats in an obnoxious tone. “Maybe because of the sun zombies?”

Mikey rolls his eyes. It’s too early to deal with Fran being sketchy after a Resident Evil video game marathon. “Yeah, ‘kay. Going back to bed now. Help yourself to whatever.”

“Oh my God, you actually think I’m bullshitting. Mikey, in about three minutes the sun is going to rise, and anyone out in it, dead or alive, will start eating people. You don’t believe me you go stand in the shade and see for yourself.”

Frank does occasionally play pranks, he’s a guy in his twenties. But they’re never the ‘ha ha made you look’ kind, they’re always more physical. Throwing of pies kind of stuff. Mikey’s suddenly sure he’s not saying this beware of zombies thing to make him look and then get laughed at. Which probably means bad things for the state of the world. Or at least Jersey. Mikey’s betting on the world though, zombies tend to multiply exponentially.

“You’re saying the sun is turning people?” He should really get all the facts before waking Gerard. Besides, a little part of him wants to lord it over for a minute. ‘I knew about the zombie apocalypse before you did’ is totally something to brag about.

“Yeah. Anyone that gets gnawed on at night falls down dead. They only get up when the sun is on them. It’s been like two days, how did you not know this?” 

“Video game marathon.” He says it like it’s a full explanation, and sure enough Frank doesn’t press for more.

“It’s really awesome that you’re alive. A lot of people work nine to fives.”

“I’m gonna go tell Gerard, and then we can figure out how to fortify this place, or if you wanna go somewhere else. The power will probably go out soon, living in a not-basement would probably be good.”

“Yeah, okay.”

Gerard is asleep on the couch. Mikey wonders for under a second why he didn’t come share the bed -once his, then Mikey moved in when he moved out, now he’ll probably have to relinquish it, if they don’t decide to take over a mall or a farm or something else classic- and then decides not to kid himself. Gerard came back because he was finally over it, but they both know Mikey isn’t anywhere near that point. He’s probably trying to not lead him on.

It doesn’t take long to wake him and apprise him of the situation. Probably because he can only tell his brother the two sentences Frank told him. Gerard isn’t nearly as devastated as a normal person would be. Mikey can’t fault him for it, he finds it mostly interesting too.

“So let me get this straight. Zombies everywhere, the nation is gonna crumble, the vast majority of people that aren’t dead will die, and everything is total anarchy by this point?”

“It’s what I figure,” Mikey answers. They’ve watched all the same movies, of course.

He’s expecting Gerard to say something about stockpiling art supplies, or wonder if anyone on the street owns a gun. He’s not expecting Gerard to grab him by his wrinkled shirt and pull him down into a kiss. It’s been three hundred and seventy days since Gerard last kissed him, three hundred and sixty seven since he moved away. Tasting him again after so long, getting all of him back after being certain he’d only get pieces, it’s brilliant. He’s sacrifice a hundred planets of people to ravenous hoards for this.

“You guys know you can’t repopulate the world like that, right?” Mikey startles at being caught, but Frank’s voice has humour, not disgust.

“Fuck off, Iero.”

“On second thought though, you two might be the only moving porn that’ll ever exist again. Feel free to go about your business. Biz-nass, I guess.”

And Mikey is laughing, at least until Gerard’s swallowing the noise with his lips. This end of the world thing is shaping up pretty well, so far. Secretly, he always thought it would.


End file.
